Technical Field
This disclosure relates to a sheet discriminator to discriminate sheet types, an image forming apparatus including the sheet discriminator, and an image forming system incorporating the sheet discriminator included in the image forming apparatus.
Related Art
In known image forming processes, to achieve higher printing quality, an image forming apparatus automatically discriminates sheet types and sets image forming conditions according to the detected sheet type.
An example of an image forming apparatus shows a configuration in which a sheet discriminator is disposed inside the image forming apparatus to discriminate information of a sheet being conveyed in a sheet conveying path.
This sheet discriminator includes an optical sensor that functions as an information detector to detect information of the sheet and that has a light emitting element and a light receiving element therein. The sheet discriminator causes the light emitting element of the optical sensor to emit light and the light receiving element of the optical sensor to receive the light reflected on a surface of the sheet traveling in the sheet conveying path, and detects sheet information based on optical information including a light amount of the received light.
Accordingly, based on the sheet information thus detected by the optical sensor, a controller that functions as a sheet distinguisher to distinguish the sheet types, the image forming apparatus sets the image forming conditions according to the sheet type.